Perdido 03

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

No Surprise - Study Says U.S. Is An Oligarchy

A new study
by researchers from Princeton and Northwestern Universities finds that
America's government policies reflect the wishes of the rich and of
powerful interest groups, rather than the wishes of the majority of
citizens.

The researchers examined close
to 1,800 U.S. policy changes in the years between 1981 and 2002; then,
they compared those policy changes with the expressed preferences of the
median American, at the 50th percentile of income; with affluent
Americans, at the 90th percentile of income; and with the position of
powerful interest and lobbying groups.

The
central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites
and organized groups representing business interests have substantial
independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest
groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.
Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite
Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of
Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism...

Recent
research by Larry Bartels and by one of the present authors (Gilens),
which explicitly brings the preferences of "affluent" Americans into the
analysis along with the preferences of those lower in the income
distribution, indicates that the apparent connection between public
policy and the preferences of the average citizen may indeed be largely
or entirely spurious.

The
theory of Economic Elite Domination is fairly self-explanatory. The
theory of Biased Pluralism holds that policy outcomes "tend to tilt
towards the wishes of corporations and business and professional
associations." In essence, the researchers found that government policy
changes are correlated with the wishes of the wealthy and with interest
groups, but not with the wishes of the average American—even though the
whole idea of "Democracy" is to ensure that the wishes of the majority
tend to carry the day.

In short, we live in a "fake democracy" that is really an oligarchy run by our economic elites.

Read about the causes of the French Revolution. I doubt very much that too many people in this country would rise up against their masters these days - the spirit of liberty, equality and fraternity is long gone......